Apple Desktops: “Notably Reliable” Says Consumer Reports

As I was in the supermarket, I noticed Consumer Reports magazine sporting an iMac (amongst other things) on its cover. This issue of Consumer Reports featured the most and least reliable brands according to surveys. While no laptop manufacturer stood out as reliable or repair-prone, “only Apple desktops stood out as notably reliable….”

For those of you unfamiliar with Consumer Reports, it is an independent publication that features no advertisements to ensure the magazine gives fair and unbiased reviews. The survey that named Apple desktops as reliable was comprised of over 950,000 readers and covered a time period from 2002 to mid-2006.

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Sounds like good news for Apple and could easily become a “Get a Mac” ad.

You guys are complaining about a ‘1997’ G3 Laptop and a ‘2000’ iBook? I have a ‘2000’ iMac and it started slowing down recently, so I upgraded the RAM. You have a 10 and 7 year old system and it still works. What’s your problem again? Try saying that about any PC that go obsolete 3 months after you buy one.

Rocco, come to think of it, my kid’s 2000 special edition iBook has been having trackpad issues lately. And the video card on my other kid’s 1998 iMac has been causing intermittent blackouts after several hours of Oregon Trail playing.

Macs Reliable? Are you kidding? My 1997 Pismo G3 laptop has become increasingly slow in the last 6 months. And its startup time is lagging. (Just don’t talk to me about its intermittent bluetooth syncing).

SteveW is exactly correct. Fair use is very carefully limited to “purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered ‘fair,’ such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.” Check out the US Copyright Office’s fair use FAQ at copyright.gov.

@DBL “Itâ€™s a quaint notion that Americans seem to have largely forgotten about called â€œfair useâ€. You can quote a short snippet, with attribution, of anything anyone says for any purpose, and there isnâ€™t a darn thing the original author can do about it, except ask you nicely not to. Perhaps youâ€™re confusing a policy and a request with a legal right.”

Ken, you make me laugh. Your single individual experience means nothing for anyone else. That’s the whole point of Consumer Reports, is to provide us statistically significant reviews. I’m sure there’s a PC user out there who’s never had a problem, but that doesn’t mean that you or I will never have a problem with a PC.

The problem with CR is that their reports are skewed most of the time.

Even though I am happy to see Apple recognized in there, I have often seen CR bash products that were great and reward others poor ones. The problem is that the folks at CR don’t obviously do all the testing themselves and have little control over the outsourced tests, so I have been told.

It’s not a question of law, CR disallows use of their reviews as a matter of principle and anyone who uses them risks not getting reviewed in the future, or finding themselves the victims of an impromptu CR reader boycott.

Regardless of what rights Consumer Reports claims they have, they don’t actually have the right to stop anyone from citing their reviews, especially not in the form of a one-line quotation. It’s a quaint notion that Americans seem to have largely forgotten about called “fair use”. You can quote a short snippet, with attribution, of anything anyone says for any purpose, and there isn’t a darn thing the original author can do about it, except ask you nicely not to. Perhaps you’re confusing a policy and a request with a legal right.

Now quoting a large section of the review would be another matter altogether, and would be a matter for the courts to weigh as to whether it is “large enough”. The commercial nature of an ad would come into play in this decision. But not for a single line.

Sorry, it won’t happen. Consumer Report’s reviews are copyrighted and they do not allow reviewees to cite the reviews in advertisements. The best Apple could do is cite “a major consumer magazine” or some such.